Midland Remembers: The Garry Coveart story, part 2

Virgina Florey

Published 8:00 pm, Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Garry Coveart Jr. knows personally what family and kindness meant in his life. His father, Garry Coveart Sr., died when Garry Jr. was just 10. Fortunately, Garrys Uncle Bert and Aunt Mayme Sible were there to play a pivotal role in their nephews life.

In 1936, Garrys dad died and his mother, Winifred, took him and his brother and sister back to live with her mother and dad in Clare, where she got a job working for the City of Clare for the next 15 years.

Shortly after that, Mayme and Bert Sible moved to Midland, where Bert took over the management of Wilson Apartments, built by his brother-in-law Frank Wilson. Built at a cost of $65,000 and located at 501 State St., it was a huge addition to the living choices available in Midland at that time. Garrys story continues here.

Employed as a teen

Garry attended Clare High School from 1940 to 1944 and during those years he got a job at Hi-Speed Gas Station in Clare. In addition to selling gas and oil for cars, the garage also carried hunting and fishing supplies. It was Garrys job to keep the racks filled with candy, cigarettes and postcards.

The postcards were distributed by a man named Earnest Jack Sharp who had a post office in Jugville, halfway between Newaygo and Fremont. Sharp gave himself the pen name of "Newaygo Newt" and wrote poetry on some 200 postcards selling for a dime each. At the time, a postcard could be purchased for a penny but hunters and fishermen didnt mind paying a dime for one of Newaygo Newts postcards to mail to friends back home. Business was brisk and Garry remembers having to constantly restock the racks where the postcards were displayed.

In 1944, Garry graduated from Clare High School, having already met the young girl he would marry in 1946, Patricia May Lucas. They were in band together.

Early days at Dow Corning

Looking around for more lucrative employment than working at the gas station, Garry heard that a new plant was in operation in Midland. It was named Dow Corning and was located on Saginaw Road, just before the curve that went around the Tittabawassee River and headed to Freeland.

Garry says, "I started on Oct. 16, 1944, and I was the seventh operator to be hired by Dow Corning." Dow Corning Corp. at that time was a collection of small buildings. The entire office staff, telephone switchboard and plant protection was in a brick building that today still stands by the entrance, although dwarfed by the huge buildings that have grown up around it.

In 1944, we were at war with the Axis Powers and airplanes were taking a lead role in the fighting. Dow Corning came out with a compound called DC 4, an ignition sealing compound. When DC 4 was applied to fuel lines in airplanes, it enabled American planes to fly from 5,000 to 7,000 feet higher than the German and Japanese planes without cutting out from the higher altitudes.

Once employed in Midland, Garry moved from Clare to Wilson Apartments to live with his Uncle Bert and Aunt Mayme in their basement apartment. Bert was the apartment complex manager. Garry rode a bicycle to work at Dow Corning until the snow came and then he bought a car. He continued living with his aunt and uncle until his marriage in 1946.

Garry gets married

On June 16, 1946, Garry and Patricia Lucas were married in Vestaburg, then moved to Midland where they lived in Wilson Apartments. They lived there for the next three years and then purchased a home in Sanford, where they live today.

In January 1986, Garry retired from Dow Corning and was immediately hired back as a contractor, a position he held until Oct. 16, 1998. His job was to inspect plants all over the country, and he flew over 225,000 miles while in this capacity. Sometimes his wife, Pat, accompanied him.

Garry and Pat had three children: Terry, Sandra and Kevin. In addition to raising the three children, Pat also drove a bus for the Meridian School District for 18 years.

Garrys Uncle Bert and Aunt Mayme left Midland in 1955 to return to Marion. The three younger sons all graduated from Midland High School, with Dean being very active in drama and music while attending school.

Eventually, Frank Wilson sold his apartment house. In 1981, it caught fire during remodeling, and burned to the ground.

Life has been good to Garry Coveart and he knows it. As Arthur Stanley, dean of Westminster in England, once wrote: "Each one of us is bound to make the little circle in which he lives better and happier. Bound to see that out of that small circle the widest good may flow."

Memories of a hard-working mother and loving aunts, uncles and grandparents, and of growing up with cousins an integral part of his life. Garry can agree with everything Arthur Stanley wrote a century and a half ago. Some things never change.